Day 3 - Rawnsley Park to Angorachina

Day 3 : Rawnsley Park to Angorachina

An absolutely awesome day - by so many measures.

For a start, we peddled 108 km with about half that distance off road. We headed out just on 7.30 in the morning, arriving around 4.15 pm

We climbed and descended about 1200m with a steady 30 km climb up into Blinman, apparently the highest town in South Australia.

We had some terrific descents off road, ripping through corners, creek beds, rattling and hopping over corrugations, gravel & big rocks.

But the real highlight was turning off the main sealed highway and riding down into Bunyeroo Gorge. Fantastic scenery all round, and riding within sight of some of the really significant geological formations in the Flinders Ranges was amazing.

Today was a day of firsts for the trip. Ric had the first stack - nothing serious, just a thrown chain on an uphill stretch with an ignominious tumble onto the track. Andrew had the first (and second) puncture.

The novelty of the bush hasn't worn off yet. We started the morning by pacing kangaroos beside us at a solid 25km/h - until they bored of the company and burned us off at impressive pace. We also spotted several mobs of emus during the day. Our first group proved an ideal test for Andrew's theory on attracting these long-legged indigenous birds. We lay on the ground and cycled our legs in the air! Loe and behold, the entire mob came from 60 meters away to within a few feet out of sheer curiosity. (Thanks to Andrew's uncle Max for sharing this gem.) We hope to load the video footage of this shortly.

One mob also ran out of a creek bed and joined us on the road while we careened down a hill. Quite an experience to travel at 40km/h with an emu traveling on each side of you at eye level!